Measuring urban vulnerability to climate change using an integrated approach, assessing climate risks in Beijing

Vulnerability and Risk Assessment to Climate Change in Sagar Island, India

Inhabitants of low-lying islands face increased threats due to climate change as a result of their higher exposure and lesser adaptive capacity. Sagar Island, the largest inhabited estuarine island of Sundarbans, is experiencing severe coastal erosion, frequent cyclones, flooding, storm surges, and breaching of embankments, resulting in land, livelihood, and property loss, and the displacement of people at a huge scale. The present study assessed climate change-induced vulnerability and risk for Sagar Island, India, using an integrated geostatistical and geoinformatics-based approach. Based on the IPCC AR5 framework, the proportion of variance of 26 exposure, hazard, sensitivity, and adaptive capacity parameters was measured and analyzed. The results showed that 19.5% of mouzas (administrative units of the island), with 15.33% of the population at the southern part of the island, i.e., Sibpur–Dhablat, Bankimnagar–Sumatinagar, and Beguakhali–Mahismari, are at high risk (0.70–0.80). It has been concluded that the island has undergone tremendous land system transformations and changes in climatic patterns. Therefore, there is a need to formulate comprehensive adaptation strategies at the policy- and decision-making levels to help the communities of this island deal with the adverse impacts of climate change. The findings of this study will help adaptation strategies based on site-specific information and sustainable management for the marginalized populations living in similar islands worldwide.

A Systematic Review of the Development and Validation of the Heat Vulnerability Index: Major Factors, Methods, and Spatial Units

PURPOSE OF REVIEW

This review aims to identify the key factors, methods, and spatial units used in the development and validation of the heat vulnerability index (HVI) and discuss the underlying limitations of the data and methods by evaluating the performance of the HVI.

RECENT FINDINGS

Thirteen studies characterizing the factors of the HVI development and relating the index with validation data were identified. Five types of factors (i.e., hazard exposure, demographic characteristics, socioeconomic conditions, built environment, and underlying health) of the HVI development were identified, and the top five were social cohesion, race, and/or ethnicity, landscape, age, and economic status. The principal component analysis/factor analysis (PCA/FA) was often used in index development, and four types of spatial units (i.e., census tracts, administrative area, postal code, grid) were used for establishing the relationship between factors and the HVI. Moreover, although most studies showed that a higher HVI was often associated with the increase in health risk, the strength of the relationship was weak.

SUMMARY

This review provides a retrospect of the major factors, methods, and spatial units used in development and validation of the HVI and helps to define the framework for future studies. In the future, more information on the hazard exposure, underlying health, governance, and protection awareness should be considered in the HVI development, and the duration and location of validation data should be strengthened to verify the reliability of HVI.

SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40641-021-00173-3.

Flood Vulnerability Analysis in Urban Context: A Socioeconomic Sub-Indicators Overview

Despite indicators-based assessment models for flood vulnerability being a well-established methodology, a specific set of indicators that are universally or widely accepted has not been recognized yet. This work aims to review previous studies in the field of vulnerability analysis in order to overcome this knowledge gap identifying the most accepted sub-indicators of exposure, sensitivity and adaptive capacity. Moreover, this review aims to clarify the use of the terms of vulnerability and risk in vulnerability assessment. Throughout a three-phase process, a matrix containing all the sub-indicators encountered during the review process was constructed. Then, based on an adaptation of the Pareto diagram, a set of the most relevant sub-indicators was identified. According to the citation count of each sub-indicator, indeed, 33 sub-indicators were chosen to represent the most universally or widely accepted sub-indicators.

Measuring Urban Resilience to Climate Change in Three Chinese Cities

Building an urban resilience index results in developing an increasingly popular tool for monitoring progress towards climate-proof cities. This paper develops an urban resilience index in the context of urban China, which helps planners and policy-makers at city level to identify whether urban development is leading to more resilience. The urban resilience index (URI) suggested in this research uses data on 24 indicators distributed over six URI component indices. While no measure of such a complex phenomenon can be perfect, the URI proved to be effective, useful and robust. Our findings show that the URI ensures access to integrated information on urban resilience to climate change. It allows comparisons of cities in a systematic and quantitative way, and enables identification of strong and weak points related to urban resilience. The URI provides tangible measures of not only overall measures of urban resilience to climate change, but also urban resilience components and related indicators. Therefore, it could meet a wide range of policy and research needs. URI is a helpful tool for urban decision-makers and urban planners to quantify goals, measure progress, benchmark performance, and identify priorities for achieving high urban resilience to climate change.

Brain diseases in changing climate

Climate change is one of the biggest and most urgent challenges for the 21st century. Rising average temperatures and ocean levels, altered precipitation patterns and increased occurrence of extreme weather events affect not only the global landscape and ecosystem, but also human health. Multiple environmental factors influence the onset and severity of human diseases and changing climate may have a great impact on these factors. Climate shifts disrupt the quantity and quality of water, increase environmental pollution, change the distribution of pathogens and severely impacts food production - all of which are important regarding public health. This paper focuses on brain health and provides an overview of climate change impacts on risk factors specific to brain diseases and disorders. We also discuss emerging hazards in brain health due to mitigation and adaptation strategies in response to climate changes.